The Japan Academy Film Prize Association for excellence in film announced the nominees for the 43rd annual awards on Wednesday. The five movies that have been nominated for Animation of the Year are:
Her Blue Sky
Weathering With You
Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire
Lupin III THE FIRST
One Piece Stampede
Of the five films nominated for Best Film of the Year, Kingdom and Tonde Saitama were based on manga by Yasuhisa Hara and Mineo Maya, respectively. Kingdom director Shinsuke Satō and Tonde Saitama director Hideki Takeuchi are also nominated for the Director of the Year award for their work on their respective films.
Tonde Saitama’s Tomokazu Tokunaga, Gackt, Fumi Nikaido, Yūsuke Iseya were nominated for best screenplay, actor, actress, and supporting actor, respectively. Also nominated for best supporting actor were Kūbo Ibuki‘s Kuranosuke Sasaki and Kingdom‘s Ryō Yoshizawa.
RADWIMPS, the band that composed the music and performed the songs for the Weathering With You film, are nominated in the Music of the Year award for their work on the film, alongside the live-action Tonde Saitama’s Face 2 fAKE, and Kingdom‘s Yutaka Yamada.
Both Kingdom and Tonde Saitama received nominations for best cinematography, art design, sound recording, and editing. Tonde Saitama also picked up a nomination for sound recording.
Animator Yôichi Kotabe (Horus – Prince of the Sun, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Pokémon) and optical and film engineer Tetsuo Kaneko (Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell) will receive Association’s Special Awards for lifetime achievement. Scriptwriter Kōji Takada (Future War Year 198X) will also receive a Chairperson’s Award for lifetime achievement.
Actress Etsuko Ichihara (Manga Nihon Mukashi Banashi, Horus – Prince of the Sun, your name.) is among the four individuals who will receive posthumous Chairperson’s Special Awards for lifetime achievement.
The Nippon Academy-Sho Association, a Japanese group roughly comparable to America’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Oscars fame, presents the Japan Academy Prizes every year. The nominees all receive “Awards of Excellence,” but the actual top award in each category will be presented in a ceremony on March 1 at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Tokyo.
Movies are eligible if they opened in Japan between December 16, 2018, and December 15, 2019.
The Animation of the Year category was only created 13 years ago. Last year, Mirai won the award. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Tekkonkinkreet, Ponyo, Summer Wars, The Secret World of Arrietty, From Up On Poppy Hill, Wolf Children, The Wind Rises, Stand By Me Doraemon, The Boy and The Beast, In This Corner of the World, and Night is Short, Walk On Girl were the previous winners. Before that, Studio Ghibli won the overall Picture of the Year Award for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.
Sources: Japan Academy Prize Association (link 2), The Mainichi Shimbun’s Mantan Web